Perú Valorando el Viaje del Agua 

The Valuing Water Initiative (VWI) was launched by the Government of the Netherlands following the UN High-Level Panel on Water, with «water journeys» — country-level programmes applying the Valuing Water Principles in practice — as one of its four pillars. Peru joined the High-Level Panel alongside the Netherlands and nine other countries, and the Peru journey began taking shape in 2018. Following two scoping missions in 2019, Peru’s National Water Authority (ANA) and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Peru signed a Memorandum of Understanding in October 2019, formally launching the journey.

The journey applies the Valuing Water Principles, recognising water’s multiple values, reconciling those values transparently, protecting water sources, educating to empower, and investing and innovating, in the Chancay-Lambayeque river basin, in Peru’s north-western coastal plain. The basin faces a combination of pressing water challenges: unreliable domestic supply for major cities, unreliable water supply for current and future agricultural activity, flood risk in populated areas, recurring droughts, and poor water quality. Given the importance of agriculture to the basin’s economy, the journey pays particular attention to improving agricultural water-use efficiency and transforming land-use practices on the coastal plain.

This project covered the diagnostic phase of the journey, comprising two linked components. A baseline analysis assessed the local and national water management system, carried out an in-depth institutional analysis of governance, incentives and interests, evaluated and enriched the basin’s Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) plan, and analysed the financial sustainability of water management in the basin. In parallel, a stakeholder engagement process connected with ongoing reform processes and system innovators, convened safe multisectoral spaces for dialogue and systemic reflection, and built cooperation with Dutch partners active in Peru. Together, these components fed into a contour strategy for systemic change to guide the journey’s subsequent implementation phase.

The diagnostic phase was adapted to the COVID-19 context, with an emphasis on understanding how the pandemic reshaped both the baseline conditions and the systemic opportunity for reform in Peru’s water sector.

Main Outcomes

• An updated baseline diagnosis of the Chancay-Lambayeque basin and national-level water governance, assessing which factors «enable and stall» the valuing of water.
• Guidelines for building multisectoral support for systemic change in national water management, based on lessons learned during the diagnostic phase.
• A report setting out the contour of a strategy for systemic change, forming the foundation for the journey’s implementation phase.
• An outline work plan for the implementation phase, developed with ANA, Peru’s Ministry of Environment (MINAM) and other stakeholders, focused on realistic, achievable activities.
• A policy brief and presentation prepared for the UN International Year of Water for Sustainable Development, sharing lessons from the Peru journey with a wider international audience.